Ghosts of Engines Past

by McMullen, Sean

  “But that's not right,” he said very earnestly. “You should always try to better yourself.”

  “But I am, young sir. I work hard and I save a bit every week in a real bank.”

  “Aye, that's good, but it's not really bettering yourself. You must learn to learn to read, write and count.”

  I giggled, and slapped his shoulder coyly.

  “I'm just a scrubber girl. All that clever work's much too hard.”

  “It's worth the effort, lass. For instance, do you know what you have in your bank account?”

  “Er, no, but the man in the bank could tell me.”

  “Would you know if he was lying?”

  “No, but he's nice, so he wouldn't do that, would he?”

  “Just as I thought. You, my lass, are going to learn to count and read, and it's I who's to be teaching you.”

  Before I had even agreed he picked up a piece of coal and started drawing marks on a workbench.

  “This is one,” he said. “And this is a plus sign, it means you add one number to the next number. Let's do one plus one. What do you get?”

  “Two ones,” I said, trying to look as if I were making an effort. “Oh, er, that's two.”

  “See?” Tommy exclaimed, looking very pleased already. “You could do simple adding up all along, but you never knew it. Now you're to take it a lot further.”

  The lesson was one of the hardest of my entire life. Feigning ignorance of arithmetic is not easy when one has done original research on inductive progression analysis techniques, but my act was good enough to fool Tommy. The lesson had ended, and he was escorting me from the factory when one of the engineers called him over.

  “Master wants long wagon taken te Doncaster tonight,” he said. “More flow tests.”

  “All these tests, yet nary a sign of the big turbine,” said Tommy. “I'd wager there's a problem with the making of it.”

  “I'd wager it can'ne be built. Ninety thousand horsepower in an engine that could fit in a bleedin' coal wagon. Ain't natural.”

  For the next week Tommy took me through the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Although I tried to act a bit thick, I must have seemed to make amazing progress. At first I thought he really wanted no more than to get his hands up my skirt, but he behaved like a gentleman at all times. On the Saturday night he invited me to a dance in Doncaster. We danced until after midnight, and I had not been so happy since the dances of my childhood in Poland.

  Every two or three days a conventional steam locomotive would be taken out onto the line and driven to its limit. It was enclosed in steel streamlining, and was achieving speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour. These trials were open to everyone, as the line passed by the manor house and workshops. I watched, but learned nothing new.

  My impression was that Walter was experimenting with shapes suited to very high speeds. The experimental train seemed designed to fly rather than roll along tracks. I wondered if Walter was testing the technology needed for flight without leaving the ground. That made sense, in fact it was very clever because one could experiment without crashing. Of course the clever technology had been devised by a lunatic, but even lunatics can be clever.

  That Walter was a lunatic was beyond question. When a fox hunt was led onto the estate by their desperate quarry, he rode out after them with a bolt action Lee-Enfield. It must have been the first time that the hunters had found themselves hunted, for they scattered as soon as he opened fire, as did the hounds.

  “Any excuse to spy on my factory!” said Walter as he returned to the manor.

  Apparently the fox escaped.

  Meantime I noticed that my room was being searched. The signs were subtle, but as the daughter of a rather manic revolutionary, I was very good at watching for spies. Tommy had given me a slateboard and chalk to practice writing between lessons, so every evening I would work through my kinetic energy and thermodynamics equations, then wipe the board clean and write 'The cat sat on the mat' ten times for Walter to find when he next searched my room.

  It was in the manor house that I made my second friend, and the contrast with Tommy could not have been greater. Walter's wife, Lady Caroline, hated Wallsford Downs, but was forced to live there. Because I was diligent about cleaning and trying to brighten the place, she took a liking to me. In my second week there I gently steered one of our conversations to Walter.

  “I don't understand why young master Shelton has a different surname to his father,” I remarked as I took the curtains in Caroline's bedroom down to wash.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why one's Raslin, and the other's Shelton.”

  “That's the rules of peerage, girl. Lord Raslin is the First Viscount Raslin, but his real name is Walter John Shelton. His son, my husband, is Walter James Shelton.”

  Father and son had the same initials! Having been raised by a paranoid revolutionary, I had developed a very good instinct for plots and conspiracies. At once I imagined some policeman writing a letter to the owner of a burgled house, a letter explaining that a burglar had been shot, and that his wife's jewelry had been recovered from the burglar's lodgings. Like me, the policeman may not have understood titles. He had addressed the letter to Walter J. Shelton instead of Viscount Raslin. Thus it was mistakenly delivered to young Walter.

  That was not all, because no burglar keeps stolen jewelry for eighteen months. He would have passed his loot onto an underworld jeweler within a day or two. The gemstones would be removed and the precious metals melted down. That way nothing could be traced, even on the black market.

  I could imagine the burglar being hired to steal some jewelry by Lord Raslin, just as he had hired me. He would have been told to hold the pieces until instructed, then slip them to some prearranged fence who would make sure that they were discovered by the police and returned to Lady Raslin. Lord Raslin would need to be sure that Elizabeth would not live long in prison, otherwise Walter would have faithfully waited for her to be released. Did Lord Raslin have blood on his hands? Was Elizabeth murdered in prison? I began to fear for my own safety, and was tempted to run. Again.

  “I suppose you have been told about Walter and me?” Lady Caroline asked as I put the curtains into a washbasket.

  “I heard he had another sweetheart, but she died,” I said innocently.

  “Better for me had she lived. Walter has never... well, why pretend, everyone knows. We have never shared a bed.”

  I had not expected such an intimate revelation, and was not sure what to say.

  “I'm sorry to hear it.”

  “Thank you. I could leave him, but I can't. Money is involved, a lot of money. My father may be an earl, but he is a very poor earl. My marriage saved him from bankruptcy, but I am stuck out here on the Yorkshire Downs in a loveless marriage with only novels for company. Sometimes I wish I could die.”

  “Master Walter seems to hate me as much as you, ladyship.”

  “Walter hate me? It's strange, but I don't think so. Lord Raslin wants grandchildren, and Walter blames him for his sweetheart's death. By not bedding me, Walter can hurt his father, so I am just his weapon. Take my advice, girl, don't marry for love or money.”

  From somewhere outside there came the boom of a shotgun, followed by shrieks of terror. Through the window I could see five women fleeing for the manor house while Walter tore down their easels and jumped up and down on their paintings.

  “Oh dear,” sighed Caroline. “One of the ladies of the Parish Auxiliary Landscapers Society must have included Walter's factory in her painting. I did warn them.”

  Tommy conducted my lessons in the main factory shed, which allowed me to observe what was happening there. The small steam turbine engine whined like a lost soul when it was running, and was so loud that it hurt my ears. Walter ran it far beyond safe speeds, and it was able to empty four tons of water from a tank in less than a minute. Then there was the liquid oxygen, which was terrifying. The technique for producing it had only recently been
invented, so few understood its dangers. In my third week there, a workman pouring liquid oxygen from one large Dewar flask to another must have become careless. Pure oxygen had permeated his clothing, and when he went outside and lit a match for his pipe, he became a human fireball.

  Walter liked to frighten me by dipping flowers in liquid oxygen and then dropping them on the floor where they would shatter. It may have just been cruelty, but I think he somehow sensed that I really was a spy. I would scream, Walter would laugh, and Tommy would rush over to comfort me. It was harrowing, but it was better than being shot at.

  I had begun flirting with Tommy to do my spying all the better, but as the days passed I found myself really looking forward to our lessons, and feeling distraught when he could not meet with me. He was a type of person who had not previously been in my life: a bright and decent young man. Being the driver of the shunting engine, he traveled the five miles to Doncaster nearly every day, and as my fourth week at Wallsford began he invited me to ride the engine with him. I made some excuse to Lady Caroline about needing to go to Doncaster to buy soap and bank my savings, and was given two hours off after promising I would work late to make up the time. The shunting engine's top speed was scarcely thirty miles per hour, but for me the trip in the open cabin with the wind all around us, the roar of the furnace, and the rattling of the wheels was the most exciting thing imaginable.

  Before Tommy took me to the shops, he had to sign over the long wagon to the Doncaster factory for a tank to be filled with liquid oxygen. There was more than liquid oxygen being produced in the place, however. Against one wall were two giant airfans, each ten feet across. Next to them was the streamlined shell for the test locomotive. Not far away were metal wings that looked as if they had been cut from a bat the size of a tugboat. I longed to walk over and examine them, but that would not have fitted my guise of a poor, ignorant scrubber girl. I made estimates and mental notes as I pretended to gaze about in wonder. It was clear to me that a huge flying machine was being built.

  Tommy was in a serious mood as we wandered the streets, eating the pies we had bought for lunch.

  “Word is that Lord Raslin's to come here at week's end,” he announced.

  “He's Master Walter's dad, isn't he?” I asked.

  “Aye, and the word for the future's not good. Word has it that he's to close the place down. He's lost patience with Master Walter.”

  “Does that mean we'll be fired?”

  “Oh aye, but not to worry. I'll not have trouble getting a job as a shunter in Leeds or York, and after the work you've done on the manor house, I reckon her ladyship will take you back to London with her.”

  I could see where he was leading. We would be separated, and he did not like the idea. After three weeks of being treated kindly and decently, neither did I.

  “I don't suppose she'd give me a letter of introduction to some posh house in Leeds or York?” I asked.

  At those words he took my hand in his.

  “If she doesn't, we could make do on a driver's wages.”

  “That we could.”

  In a strange way I had just accepted a proposal of marriage.

  We finished our pies and continued our walk back to the shunting yards at the Liquid Air Works. The tank on the long wagon was still being filled with liquid oxygen, so we waited by the shunting engine.

  “If we're to be married, it's a bit strange for us not to have even kissed,” said Tommy.

  Now I felt alarm. I was being swept deeper and deeper into an identity that I could never live. I had been acclaimed as a mathematical genius in Poland, yet Tommy thought I was an ignorant scrubber girl trying to make good. He would be mortified, even humiliated when he found out... but then and there it was easier to just forget the future and kiss him. After all, he was quite handsome and very gallant.

  I was beside Tommy when the factory foreman signed the long wagon over to be taken back to Wallsford.

  “Overtime all round for week te come,” he commented. “Big test, says young master.”

  “Big test of what?” asked Tommy. “We've not got the main turbine.”

  “Course we have. It's mounted on long wagon.”

  “Not that little one, the big bleeder. The one with ninety thousand horsepower.”

  “Young master says it's to be ready. Young master's paying the wages, so why should I say otherwise?”

  I was almost bursting with questions, yet I kept my tongue firmly clamped between my teeth.

  “Where's the assembly to be done?” asked Tommy.

  “Not been told. Damn monster's sixty feet across wi' wings on. Nary a building hereabout can put a roof over that, or open doors te let it out.”

  As their conversation wandered onto schedules and loads, I began assembling the huge, steel flying machine in my mind. I estimated the wings, airfans, and streamlined body to weigh about thirty tons, and I had also heard the figure four tons for paraffin and liquid oxygen bandied about. I could not even guess the weight of the big steam turbine, but it was unlikely to be less than ten tons. The total weight was probably in excess of forty-four tons.

  I was finally piecing together Walter's vision. It was a forty-four ton aircraft powered by a ninety thousand horsepower steam turbine. It had fifteen miles of absolutely straight railway track to roll along as it gathered speed. Landing might prove to be a problem, but he had probably thought that out.

  All the way back to Wallsford I pretended to be dreaming about my future with Tommy, but in fact I was trying hard not to think about what lay ahead for us. There would have to be a confession of who I really was, and I was a spy, illegal immigrant, and mathematical genius. Worse, I had used Tommy's well-meant lessons as an excuse to spy on the factory. He would feel betrayed, ill-used and humiliated, and any chance of a future together would be lost. Instead I thought about ninety thousand horses towing forty-four tons of flying machine into the air.

  As we neared Wallsford Downs we saw the vicar frantically pedaling his bicycle along the road while Walter rode beside him, beating him with a riding whip.

  “Aht, he must have got too close to the factory on his pastoral visit,” explained Tommy.

  Now I realised why Lord Raslin's spies had been caught so easily. Practically everyone entering the estate was set upon and beaten or shot at. Walter's lunacy was in part an act, I knew that now. When dealing with his factory workers and engineers I had observed that he was calm, attentive, and even friendly. If the histrionics were an act, then what was his agenda? This was proving harder to deduce than the design of his engine.

  For the rest of the afternoon I avoided the future by calculating continually in my head as I swept, scrubbed and dusted. When I finally locked myself in my room for the night I covered the slate with calculations by the light of a tallow candle, and even when I finally got into my bed and closed my eyes the figures and equations continued to waltz through my head.

  The equations were the main problem. Too many of the constants in them were still variables, so I could not be sure of anything. How much lift would the wings provide? How much thrust would the airfans deliver? How much did the aircraft really weigh? The puzzle's pieces were laid out before me, but most of them were painted black. Even when assembled, the picture had more gaps than substance.

  The week that followed was absolutely frantic. Walter was in such a frenzy to be ready for his father's visit that he ceased to care about whether or not I was a spy. I hauled bagloads of discarded drawings and notes out of the drafting office to be burned in the factory's furnace, but the figures and drawings that I managed to glance at were only refinements on what I already knew. The factory was put on two twelve hour shifts, and the thunder of the steam chamber rolled out every night as it burned liquid oxygen and paraffin in test firings. I saw little of Tommy, because he was making as many as seven trips a day to the Doncaster factory in his engine.

  True to his word, Lord Raslin arrived at the end of my fourth week at Wallsford Downs. Naturally h
e did not so much as glance my way when the household was lined up before him on the day of his arrival. I could not risk writing a report, so I knew I would have to deliver my findings face to face. For the first two days I was ignored, then on the third I was cleaning Caroline's bedchamber when his lordship simply walked in and stood beside the door with his hands in his pockets.

  “My butler is making sure that nobody sees us together,” he said quietly. “What have you to report?”

  “Your son is building a steam turbine engine that can deliver ninety thousand horsepower,” I replied as I continued with my dusting. “My calculations show that a machine powered by such a device might well exceed three hundred miles per hour.”

  At this news Lord Raslin's composure cracked.

  “But—but that would put London and Edinburgh just one hour apart!” he exclaimed. “Wait, no, the existing tracks could not sustain a train traveling at even one hundred miles per hour, let alone three times as much.”

  “But were the turbine in a flying machine, you would need no tracks.”

  Lord Raslin was genuinely stunned by his son's vision. In the minutes that followed I gave my employer a briefing on what I had learned.

  “He has been building his flying machine in two places,” I concluded. “I have never seen the big turbine, so it must be in some third factory. It has never been tested with the steam generator, so I estimate the first flight is at least a month away, if not more.”

  Lord Raslin stood staring at the carpet and considered this for perhaps half a minute, then he shook his head and looked up.

  “So, Walter has replaced his love of Elizabeth with a grand vision,” he said. “Laudable indeed, but that will not preserve our family name. I want grandsons, not steam engines. What about that?”

  “What your son does or does not do with his wife was not to be my concern, sir.”

  “Of course not, and you have done well. So, my son wants to fly, does he? Good, I think I have him where I want him. Today I shall draw up papers giving control of his finances to Lady Caroline, and making her my sole heir. If Walter, ah, fulfills his marital obligations with her, I shall burn those papers. If not, he will lose another dream.”